102) Are Trinitarians Idol Worshippers? Are they Saved? - a podcast by William Schlegel, Preston Macy

It’s a good question. I don’t know if there is a black and white answer because there are different degrees and facets to the question. Many trinitarians that I know seem to not really know what they believe, and functionally or “practically” believe in in One God, the Father.

 

There are different levels and degrees of judgment. Like James said, teachers will be judged with greater strictness (James 3:1).

 I am not confident that “everything is going to be alright” for someone who insists that God is a triune being, a Trinity, or that “Jesus is God”. Trinitarianism is messing with what Jesus called the greatest commandment: that Yehovah our God is one (Deu. 6:4, Mark 12:29-34).

 Exodus 20:2-3    "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.  3 "You shall have no other gods before me."

 So the question is: who, or what (according to Trinitarianism), is the one God. Is the one God the Father alone, or is the one God a tri-personal being, a substance that has more than one person.

And the New Testament says that the One God is the Father: John
17:1-3 “Father...this is eternal life, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

1 Corinthians 8:6, “As for us there is one God, the Father...”

All “deity of Christ” interpretations of passages like John 1 and Philippians 2 attempt to do two things:

1. denigrate the Father by declaring that someone or something else other than the Father is the one true God, and

2.  rob the man Christ Jesus of who he is and what
he did. Since Trinitarianism insists that Jesus is a god-person who only “took on” human flesh or human nature, that means there never was or is a real human person Jesus the Messiah from Nazareth. Otherwise, Jesus would be two persons: a god-person Jesus and a man-person Jesus from Nazareth. But traditional Christianity decided in AD 451, almost 1600 years ago, that Jesus is not two persons. He is only the god person. The man Jesus of Nazareth never did anything -never humbled himself, never obeyed God, never trusted God - because he never existed. “He was only a god-person all along.”

 1 John 2:22-23 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No
one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

Who is denying the Son? Someone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, or someone who denies that Jesus, a real human person, is the Christ.

1 John 2:22 does not say, “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is
God”.  Far from it. The Son of God is never literally God in the Bible. The title Son of God is given to created beings, especially to Israel, and to Israel’s chief representative, the king of the line of David.

 

We do have a judge, the man, the human person, Jesus the Christ from Nazareth. The Apostle Paul stated that God “will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed and of this He has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31, 2 Tim. 2:5, Romans 5:15, 2 Cor. 5:10). Have we said in our hearts during our time in this age “a mere man can’t judge us, we will not have that man rule over us”?

Ironically, perhaps some Trinitarians may be saved by what they’ve insisted they aren’t saved by, i.e., works (Matt. 16:27, 12:36-37; Romans 2:6-7, 2 Cor. 5:10, 1 Cor. 3:12-14, Gal. 6:7-9, James 2:20-26). I have a feeling that one of those works will be how people treated the children of God who believe that God is the Father, and that the man Jesus is the Messiah (1 John 5:1, John 8:42, Matt. 25:41-46).

 People like me are not the final judge (Romans 2:16). We don’t have all the information. God has appointed the man Jesus Christ, and given him the authority to judge (Acts 17:31, John 5:22, 27).

 “So each of us shall give account of himself to God” (Romans 14:12).

 

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